Middle east live: Netanyahu threatens end to ceasefire with hostage ultimatum

It’s still early days for the Trump administration, and we’re yet to see how exactly the US president will deal with North Korea in his second term in office.

Last week, he said his team “will have relations with North Korea”, adding that he gets “along with them very well”.

During his first term, Mr Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on three occasions, becoming the first sitting US president to step on North Korean soil since the end of the Korean war.

However, the pair are in disagreement over the future of Gaza, with North Korea a strong critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Now the country’s news agency has called the US a “ferocious robber” over Mr Trump’s plan to take ownership of the Gaza region.

North Korea has also raised alarm over the docking a US submarine in the South Korean city of Busan.

We will have to see how, and if, Mr Trump responds to North Korea in the coming days

North Korea has become the latest country to condemn Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.

Last week, the US president announced plans to take ownership of the war-torn region and make it the “Rivera of Middle East”.

Under his plan, two million Palestinians would be resettled in neighbouring countries – which have opposed the idea.

Now North Korea has joined the opposition to the plan, condemning the idea as “bluster” and accusing Washington of robbery.

Commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency said: “The world is now boiling like a porridge pot over the U.S.’ bombshell declaration’”.

It also criticised the Trump administration over its calls to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland, and its decision to change the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America”.

“The US should awaken from its anachronistic daydream and stop at once the act of encroaching upon the dignity and sovereignty of other countries and nations,” the KCNA report said, while calling the U.S. a “ferocious robber”.

The UK government has called on all parties involved in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire to “cooperate” to ensure the truce holds.

“Our focus absolutely remains on the true the ceasefire can be sustained,” a government spokesperson said on Tuesday.

“We need to see the release of hostages this Saturday. This is a fragile deal.

“We’re committed to building confidence on all sides to help sustain it, and we encourage all parties to engage, to sustain the ceasefire, to see all hostages released, and indeed continued flow of aid into Gaza, but [for] this deal to work really good parties [need] to cooperate in order to ensure all stages of the ceasefire are completed.”

International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan is the first to be hit with economic and travel sanctions authorised by US president Donald Trump targeting Israel’s war crimes tribunal.

Mr Khan, who is British, was named in an annex to an executive order signed by Trump last week, Reuters reported.

The ICC on Friday condemned the sanctions, pledging to stand by its staff and “continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world, in all situations before it”.

In the nearly three weeks that have passed since Israel and Hamas concluded the ceasefire agreement, there have been five exchanges of hostages and prisoners. These exchanges have not been without last-minute hitches and delays, but they have taken place – to the immense joy and relief of the families and friends of those who have returned, and doubtless to the satisfaction of the many officials who concluded and helped to broker the agreement.

The procession of displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza, many seemingly in good heart, has also been an extraordinary testament to human resilience, given that most were setting off on the journey more in hope than in confidence that they would have any sort of home to return to. Their determination to return is all the more impressive given the immediate need that exists for food and medical aid, not to mention the gargantuan task of reconstruction that lies ahead.

Read The Independent’s view:

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and prime minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen discussed the Gaza truce in a phone call on Tuesday, according to a readout from Egypt’s government.

“President El-Sisi and the Danish Prime Minister reiterated the crucial need for the full implementation of the ceasefire agreement in its three stages, the exchange of hostages and detainees, as well as facilitating immediate and unfettered access for humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip to end the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the sector,” it read.

“They also underscored the imperative to begin the reconstruction of Gaza to make it livable again, without displacing its Palestinian population, safeguarding their rights and ability to live on their land.”

At least 48,219 Palestinians have been killed and 111,665 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday.

In the past 24 hours, 11 deaths were recorded and 10 people went into hospitals injured, health authorities said according to Wafa news agency.

Israel’s fatal shooting of a pregnant Palestinian woman raises fears in the West Bank

The call came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first child, was whispering. There was panic in her voice.

“Help, please,” Shula recalled her saying. “You have to save us.”

Minutes later, Sondos Shalabi was fatally shot.

Shalabi and her husband, 26-year-old Yazan Shula, had fled their home in the early hours of Sunday as Israeli security forces closed in on Nur Shams refugee camp, a crowded urban district in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

Israeli military vehicles surrounded the camp days earlier, part of a larger crackdown on Palestinian militants across the northern occupied West Bank that has escalated since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza took effect last month.

Pregnant woman Sondos Shalabi was killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Read more here:

Away from the headline proposals on Gaza’s future, many Palestinians now fear the prospective Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have escalated attacks since the Gaza ceasefire agreement.